


Poetry and Power

by sahiya



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Gen, Magic, Mental Illness, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-19
Updated: 2010-01-19
Packaged: 2017-10-06 11:20:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/53140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sahiya/pseuds/sahiya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Drusilla loves chaos.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Poetry and Power

**Author's Note:**

> This is for [](http://hobgoblinn.livejournal.com/profile)[**hobgoblinn**](http://hobgoblinn.livejournal.com/), who was kind enough to give me a Buffy prompt even though she really wanted Harry Potter, and asked for Drusilla and Ethan.

Someone came and changed it all. Topsy turvy, upside down, inside out - no, outside in. Drusilla was sorry to miss it. Spike worried. He wanted her to sit in the crypt and miss the chaos, beautiful chaos with all the little humans running about like dollies with their heads ripped off.

She loved chaos. Loved the lyrical, waxing-waning patterns in it that no one else could see. She saw them, dancing and slipping, like the mirages at the edges of her visions, the ones that hurt to look at, fading in and out. Pulsing. Strange geometry. Chaos. Humans had made it into a science but she knew it for what it really was - poetry. Poetry and power. Spells.

There was a chaos mage arrived in Sunnydale. She wanted to find him. Wanted to drink him, swallow his power and let it tingle all the way to the tips of her fingers and toes. Spike wanted her to sit in the crypt and miss the chaos, but she could find a way to keep the chaos with her all the time. All the time, all those lovely shapes and colors for which no human language had names, inside of her, filling her body, her head. Her poor Spike was so earthly. He could not see the chaos. He didn't understand what he asked of her when he told her to stay in the crypt.

She found the mage in his shop, sweeping up the remnants of his god. Shattered gods. Shattered magic. She sniffed the air. She'd missed the chaos, but she could still have the mage. This was a threshold she could cross. And she did.

"Poor little dolly lost his god," she said, inside his threshold now. "Lost his magic, lost his -" she paused, considering the figure before her. He was kneeling on the floor, as though in worship; she remembered kneeling like that once, remembered the worship of order and virtue and sanctuary. Safety. He was bent, though. The back of his neck exposed to her. Vulnerable. Someone else had got here first. "Lost his lover," she finished, knowing it was true through a flash of strange, ephemeral geometry - shapes fitting together like this man and the Watcher had once fit together. Like she and Spike fit together. Like the Slayer and Angelus never would.

The mage raised his head then, saw her. The Watcher had beat him bloody, but he smiled and rose to his feet. "Well, then. What have we here?"

"You came and made it new, made it glorious."

"I did," he said, smile widening as though he did not know she'd come to drink him. "I'm glad someone appreciates my effort. Ripper most certainly didn't."

She closed her eyes and swayed. "He does not know. He worships virtue now."

"I know," the mage said. He let his god rain from a dustpan into a bin. "It's extremely tedious. Him and that little chit of a Slayer."

She nodded. "She turns it all to dust, to dust and ashes and order." She stepped into the room. Shattered magic, but at least it was magic - dark and deep and potent, with swirling shapes inside of it. She closed her eyes and breathed it in. His blood would taste of pomegranates and blood oranges.

He was watching her. "You know," he said, "as fond as I am of having lovely, if rather mad, vampires drop in on me unexpectedly, I really must be going. Ripper will be by in the morning and I'd like to be as far away as possible by then."

She frowned. "Running away?"

"I prefer to think of it as a strategic retreat."

"But you have no where to go." She held her hand and closed her eyes again, swaying to the deep notes that sounded inside her head, like the bells of the old country, but wild and untamed, not harnessed to a church. "No where to go. No one to go to. He is your oldest, best, and last friend, and he has chosen her. Poor little dolly. I could make you new, you know. Like you made them new. I could remake you, and together we could let chaos reign forever." She opened her eyes and stepped closer still. One step, two, three, four, and there he was. He did not flinch as she touched his face with the tips of her fingers. He was warm and breathing beneath the bruises the Watcher had left on him. "Chaos," she said again. "But you needn't worship your shattered god. You could worship me instead."

"Ah no, sorry, love," he said. "Gods are one of those things - accept no substitutes. Though I think you'd please Janus."

She smiled. "We could please him, if you let me make you new. Would you love me?" Chaos was so much more pleasing with three. Two was an orderly number, ants and schoolgirls marching in rows. And she had not seen Spike with another man in an age, not since the gypsy curse had made Angelus so broody and boring.

He shook his head. "Not my team."

She pouted. "Then I will drink you dry."

"Ah," he said, and suddenly there was a cross, horrific and looming, searing itself across her eyes like a streak of sunlight on her skin. "That's a rather more troubling problem then." She snarled, features shifting; she could taste his blood on the tips of her fangs, could see the pulse beneath his skin - a steady rhythm she longed to end in a burst of blood inside her mouth. "I realize it's not very poetic of me, but I'm a pragmatist and so is Janus, so I think he approves. When in Sunnydale . . ." He shrugged. "Well. You know."

"I could have made you new. We could have killed the Watcher together, snapped his neck and left him for the Slayer as a pretty present for her to find."

The mage's easy smile slipped, and his own chaos opened to her like a coded book revealing its secrets. The chaos of a life spent in pursuit and evasion, dodging, searching, never finding, wishing, wishing, wishing, but never hoping. A sea in a storm, a white rabbit, a bloodied sword. Green eyes and a guitar.

She bared her fangs. "Poor dolly. You love him still."

"Unfortunately." He sighed. "It's a character flaw, I'm afraid. But you see why it wouldn't work out between us. Leave now, if you please."

She snarled again and backed away. Near the door she stopped, seized suddenly by that strange, pulsing geometry with mirages at the edges. Do not look at the sun, your eyes will burn. You will burn, you will burst into flame, like the phoenix but ash is only ash and does not make new. "He will destroy you," she said.

He held that thrice damned cross still. "Probably."

"He will betray you and forget you, until he hears of your death. He will mourn you then, but it will be too late."

He shrugged. "Mourning always comes too late."

She left, back out into the air, cool on her skin after the hot-headed magic of the shop. She could feel it still out here; the spell was ended but the magic lingered. She wished she might have tasted him - just a drop, a pomegranate seed on her tongue that would have bound him to her like Persephone. Such lovely chaos he had ruled and had ruled him. She wished it for her own, for her and Spike. But he loved the Watcher and that would not do.

It was late, almost early. Spike would be angry with her for leaving the crypt. But she had tasted her chaos. Tasted, not feasted, and yet she thought that perhaps for tonight it was enough.

_Fin._


End file.
